Doubt

Doubt. It holds us back, and sometimes that’s good– to be cautious and take time to think. Sometimes it just holds us back. I had become remiss in my blogging, infrequent in my posts. I doubted my ideas. I held back on posting. I needed a boost. It’s one reason why I enrolled in CCCWrite.

I love having a neighborhood of colleagues to learn with, and blogging is a wonderful way to explore shared and diverse ideas, responding to ideas in comments and blog posts to better our pedagogy and open up our minds to other ideas.

With Reflective Writing Club, I’ve expanded my neighborhood and reaffirmed the idea that we all have something of value to share. Each week I’d read and comment, and create a Thursday Thoughts reflection to capture snippets of important ideas. Each participant’s post added his/her own perception and experience to the weekly prompts, and those unique ideas provided insights for all of us — some commonalities and some differences.

The Reflective Writing Club prompt for the week is:

Take some time to reflect back to the start of our Reflective Writing Club.

What were your objectives for this experience? Do you feel that you have achieved them?

Discuss any unexpected outcomes you have had as a result of the Reflective Writing Club.

Discuss any new or improved skills you’ve acquired through this blogging club and share how they will contribute to your work.

I’ve more than received the boost I needed to continue blogging. I’ve reaffirmed the idea that blogging adds value— in our own reflective thinking and practice, and by learning from the insights of others in their posts. It should, I hope, dispel the doubt for all of us when we think our ideas are insignificant: they aren’t insignificant. They’re part of the bigger picture, the rays of life where our individual bursts create a wholeness that values us all.

I was hoping also to understand the issues of online teaching, or at least some of the ways that online teaching differs from my “in person” teaching. I had hoped and did discover how deliberately the participants in our group created environments that encouraged the building of communities in their courses. I was glad to understand that.

For myself, I learned to cover less in my posts. I’ve always taught in classrooms with diverse learners whose abilities ranged from nonreaders to college level so every project plan was comprehensive. In most of my blog posts, I tried to cover too much. So, I learned that short yet complete is better.